'When I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair' Simone de Beauvoir, born today, 1908

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me. - Simone de Beauvoir, French novelist, feminist, intellectual, existentialist philosopher and political activist

“When woman, fully the equal of man, can love in her strength and not in her weakness, love will become for her as for man a source of life and not of mortal danger.” -Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex